Tapestry

P·P·O·W is pleased to present Tapestry, Srijon Chowdhury’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Oscillating between a highly stylized technique and uncanny realism, the Portland-based artist’s prismatic compositions mine elements from daily life to find the universal in the quotidian. Combining interests in philosophy, religion, ecology, and art history, Chowdhury’s intensely detailed, saturated, and hypnotic narrative compositions transform the artist’s immediate environment into immersive dreamscapes where the boundaries between our physical reality and the metaphysical, mythological and the supernatural dissolve.

Speaking to subjective experience, Tapestry aims to transport the viewer on a visceral and emotional level. At the center of the gallery stands a welded steel circular fence. Developed over a decade, the structure mimics the architecture of a circular mosque built by the artist’s ancestors in the coastal farmlands of Bangladesh. In Chowdhury’s construction, Islamic geometric patterning is replaced with the language of archaic sigils. The two halves of the sigil fence represent two poems by William Blake; A divine image and The divine image. Counterparts, the poems contemplate the dark and light aspects of humanity. Affixed to the fence is a series of intimately scaled twists on traditional genre painting. Potently charged and framed by the fence’s mysterious latticing, the paintings become the windows of an encloser which is both isolated from and inseparably connected to its exterior world. Referencing other structures such as Giulio Camillo’s 16th century Theatre of memory and Buddhist prayer wheels, Chowdhury’s fence is meant to be walked through, and activated by the viewers sensory experience of image, symbol, and architecture.

Surrounding the fence are several immersive large-scale paintings, which act as both backdrop and landscape for the circular structure. First exhibited in Same old song, Chowdhury’s 2022 solo exhibition at the Frye Museum in Seattle, Mouth (divine dance), 2022, is a monumentally scaled painting comprising of five panels which depict a fiery inferno framed by parted lips. Shadow-like figures clasp hands and dance amidst the flames, as if the whole of humanity has joined together in their shared fate. Chowdhury also faintly renders more than a hundred motifs and figures from his prior works along the wide mouth’s lip creases, operating as a survey of the artists’ rich symbolic lexicon.

In many of Chowdhury’s paintings, portraits of his family and natural surroundings can be viewed as both direct representations and greater universal archetypes. His engulfing floral patterns recall medieval allegories such as the unicorn tapestries which contemplate the dualistic nature of desire and love. In Tapestry, Chowdhury includes multiple depictions of a cherry tree that blooms once a year for one week in his backyard. Works such as Andreas with Wildflowers, 2024, depict the artist’s friend leaning against the blossoming tree. However, instead of a domestic landscape, a riotous sea of wildflowers and sprawling tree limbs create a sublime architecture, punctuated by an abstract “rose window” at top of the canvas. For Chowdhury flowers represent a microcosm of the universe, of both spring and fall, life and death, and the fleetingness and unattainability of the mystical experience.

Together, the works in Tapestry capture the mysterious and eternal drama of the internal plane and aim to reflect upon the way art can be used to locate beauty and magic during periods marked by climate collapse and political turmoil. In Chowdhury’s references to mythologies of the past, the present moment is located within a larger history of mysticism and devotion. As writer SJ Cowan states, through Chowdhury’s works “the crises of the world can be viewed as the miracle of existence made manifest"¹.

Srijon Chowdhury (b. 1987) was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and lives and works in Portland, OR, where he and his wife Anna Margaret run the exhibition space Chicken Coop Contemporary. He holds a BFA from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN, and an MFA from the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA. He has been awarded grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, 2018; Regional Arts and Culture Council, 2018; Andy Warhol Foundation, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Calligram Foundation, 2017; and the Otis Governors Grant, 2012. In 2017, he was awarded the Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artists Fellowship. Chowdhury has presented solo exhibitions at Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Foxy Production, New York, NY; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; SE Cooper Contemporary, Portland, OR; CFA Live, Milan, Italy; Antoine Levi, Paris, France; and Ciaccia Levi, Paris, France; among others. His work has been included in group shows at the FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, CA; Foxy Production, New York, NY; Et al., San Francisco, CA; Franz Kaka, Toronto, Canada; Chapter NY, New York, NY; Deli Gallery, New York, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; Nir Altman, Munich, Germany; the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; among others. Chowdhury’s work was recently showcased in the 2024 Artists’ Biennial in Portland, OR. Concurrent with his co-curation of the Frye Art Museum’s group exhibition Door to the Atmosphere, the institution held Chowdhury’s first solo museum exhibition Same Old Song in 2022, coinciding with a publication of the same name.